


spring will be spring

by dorypop



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, M/M, Quarantine, do not under any circumstances read this as a guide, mild coronavirus infection, on what to do if you think you might be infected, please follow the instructions provided by your local authorities, questionable social distancing abilities, this is set somewhere around BLLB or TRK if you'd like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23310631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorypop/pseuds/dorypop
Summary: He should have spent the morning googling stats and facts about Covid-19 and not doing homework he wasn’t going to be able to hand in.He called Ronan. Astonishingly, Ronan picked up.They were living the Apocalypse.(Adam and Ronan are quarantined at Monmouth. Ronan is sick.)
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 18
Kudos: 94





	spring will be spring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mariagvogel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariagvogel/gifts).



“Adam, call for you!”

The phone had been left off the hook, the new receptionist off the moment she saw Adam was coming. Adam thought it was a bit ridiculous, how the hysteria had taken over the world. Practice social distancing, the radio shouted in between country club hits. Stay at least three feet away from other people—except from when you were working at the trailer factory, especially during the night shift, where you got crammed next to the rest of your coworkers and the only thing that mattered were how many pieces an hour got out of the production line.

Adam picked the phone.

“Hello.”

“Adam! How great to hear from you. How’s everything?” Gansey’s voice didn’t really fit at Boyd’s. The receptionist dawdled, compulsively applying what should have been hydroalcoholic solution but really was just water with a few drops of alcohol Adam himself had added, at Boyd’s command, before the new girl’s shift began.

“Fine. How’re you at DC?”

“Marvelous. Jane’s getting a bit antsy, but I suppose it was to be expected. Helen’s got a new boyfriend, did you know?”

Adam did not know. He tried not to linger on the fact that Gansey had invited Blue and not him to Helen’s last bonding-with-family idea, that consisted on some yoga retirement that Adam was certainly not really interested in. He didn’t have any right to be jealous. He couldn’t afford a week off to explore his inner self. He still remembered how well his last trip with Gansey had gone. He only had to make it two hours more and he could collect this week’s paycheck and go buy some food and maybe sleep for five hours that night.

He hummed.

“I’m busy right now. Did you need something?” he asked.

“Yes, actually, I did. It’s Ronan.”

Adam gripped the phone a bit tighter, to make it easier for the virus to get stuck on his skin if it was indeed infected.

“What happened?”

“Nothing, I guess. Not really. I’m just worried. I haven’t heard from him in two days, and Declan said he hasn’t called either, so—” Adam snorted. The day Ronan called Declan before calling Gansey would really be the day the Apocalypse had begun. “It’s not that I think he’s sick with coronavirus or anything, not really, but it’s all over the news and, Adam, could you please go check if he’s alright?”

“I thought he was at the Barns?”

“I don’t think so, no. But could be. Anyway, thanks a lot. Jane sends you her regards. See you next week, yeah?”

Gansey hung up and Adam rushed back to the car he’d been working on, frowning as the new girl used a rag to clean the handset. He of course knew it was what she was supposed to do, and why she’d been hired after their usual receptionist had been confined at home when her last boyfriend had been diagnosed with coronavirus, but having that knowledge didn’t help him feel less dirty.

Boyd didn’t look them in the eye when he left their paychecks on the counter before closing up. The new girl squealed as she picked hers. Adam bit the inside of his cheek not to snap at her—it was not her fault, after all, and she probably needed the money. She looked young, Adam though. He didn’t know her name.

“I don’t have to tell you not to come if you’ve got symptoms, right?” Boyd said as a goodbye. I’ll hire some shrieking teen as a replacement who’ll get your salary instead of you, Adam translated.

He allowed himself ninety seconds on his car’s driving seat to change his mindset from _fixing cars_ to _grocery shopping_. He had maybe forty minutes before they closed for the day.

He drove to the supermarket. The only food he had left at St. Agnes was some milk, maybe for half a glass. He was very glad Fridays were pay day.

He could have saved himself the trip.

Going inside the supermarket felt like how going into his first Aglionby class had felt like. Judged by the sweaty cashiers who looked resentfully at him, as they mentally calculated how many more demanding customers they’d have to deal with before they could also go home. Completely at loss when he eyed the empty shelves, trying to project some kind of purpose to his steps when they took him to the only item left in the vegetable section. Five stages over disgusted when he discovered they were just overpriced pre-peeled carrots.

He finally bought some sausages that probably had more plastic than meat and the last bottle of apple juice on the shelf, and tried to convince himself that made up for the lack of fruit. The last thing he needed was to get scurvy just in the middle of the coronavirus crisis.

“Excuse me, Ma’am? When are you open again in the morning?” he asked his cashier, who seemed on the verge of tears.

“Six,” she dutifully answered. Adam supposed he could go then to Monmouth to check on Ronan and cook the sausages there for both of them—he didn’t really like the smell that lingered every time he used the hot plates on top of his toaster oven. And then he’d get some sleep at home and come back to the supermarket before getting to the factory early morning.

He collected his groceries.

With a heavy feeling that he didn’t want to understand, he drove to Monmouth.

His knocks weren’t answered, but he wasn’t really expecting any different. He opened the door and entered.

No Ronan in the main room. No Chainsaw, either, and Adam didn’t know if he felt disappointed. He kind of missed the bird, now that he’d stopped for a second to think about her.

He left his bag on the kitchen counter while calling for Ronan.

He then knocked on Ronan’s door.

“Lynch, it’s Adam. You in there? Gonna come in, okay?”

He came in. Ronan was asleep, and for a brief moment Adam felt the churning embers of guilt at what he was about to do. Ronan didn’t get enough sleep as it were, not even when he crashed at St. Agnes bleary-eyed and with the firm promise not to bother Adam’s studying, which he inevitably always broke, though sometimes not intentionally.

He shook Ronan’s shoulder anyway.

Ronan startled.

“What—?” he mumbled, before he seemed to recognize Adam. “Fuck off.”

“Charming as always.”

“You need to leave.”

Adam was not impressed. Not that he thought Ronan was particularly scary, but he definitely was not when he still had pillow marks on his cheek.

“Gansey was worried,” he said. He opened the window because the room smelled like bird poo. “Where’s Chainsaw?”

“She left earlier. And I’m alive. You can fuck off now.”

Adam wasn’t in the habit of letting other people tell him what to do, and he’d already fulfilled his obligation to Gansey. He also needed to reformulate his weekly meal plan, in case a just-open supermarket had a similar situation than a nearly-closed one.

“You’ll miss out my amazing cooking skills, then,” he said, too tired to even imprint his voice with some snappish hue.

He only regretted having to cook the sausages at home, but that way he could even save half the package for the following day.

“You can’t cook shit, Parrish,” Ronan drawled from his bedroom. It was kind of true, so Adam didn’t answer.

He was already wearing his jacket and just about to get his sausages and his juice bottle when he saw the masks.

An open packet, maybe a dozen blue unused face masks.

He felt his heart stop.

“Ronan.”

“Told you to fuck off,” Ronan said, still from his bed.

“Ronan, where did you get these masks?”

It was a bad sign that Ronan took a moment to think before speaking. “Bought them online.”

Then, Ronan coughed.

“Shit,” Adam muttered.

With a certain trembling to his hands he stubbornly didn’t care to acknowledge, Adam shrugged off his jacket. He took one of the masks and carefully put it on.

He’d read all the pamphlets pasted all over Aglionby. Wear gloves. Wear a mask. Don’t touch your face. Wash your hands.

He found a pair of cleaning gloves under the sink. He washed his hands counting to twenty before wearing them and again after putting them on, because he couldn’t remember any song of those they said helped keep the count. He breathed deeply before going back to Ronan’s room.

He gave Ronan a mask.

“Have they tested you?” he asked. The bags under Ronan’s eyes looked more purple when next to the blue of the mask. It didn’t really go with the blue of Ronan’s eyes.

“Don’t want Declan to know.”

Each new cough broke something inside Adam’s belly.

“How long have you been like this?”

Gansey had only been gone for four days.

Ronan grunted.

“Give me your phone,” Adam demanded.

Ronan narrowed his eyes. Adam didn’t relent.

“Battery’s dead,” Ronan finally said.

Adam rolled his eyes. He took the phone Ronan had rescued from the mess in his bed linen.

“Chargers _are_ a thing, Lynch.” The screen did indeed not light up. “Didn’t know you cleaned, by the way,” he said, referring to the gloves he was wearing and that wouldn’t let him google the number he needed to be calling this very instant.

“Gansey bought those for a dress-up party at Cheng’s or some shit.”

That information didn’t contribute in any way to calm the frantic beating of Adam’s heart.

“Do you have a thermometer?”

Ronan’s non-committal gesture was the cue he was waiting for to leave the room to be able to panic properly without having to think about controlling whatever facial expressions the mask didn’t manage to cover.

He found the first-aid kit in the kitchen cupboard, behind a stale cookies package. He disinfected the screen before plugging the phone. He brought Ronan a glass of water and the thermometer before making the call to Henrietta’s Hospital.

They asked many questions. If Ronan had traveled to Europe recently. If he’d been in contact with other infected people. If he smoked or had any previous lung diseases. Adam had to look for Declan’s number in Ronan’s contact list because he didn’t know if Ronan had any allergies and by that point Ronan had fallen asleep again and anyway he didn’t think he trusted Ronan with his own health, which felt like a very despicable form of treason if Adam stopped to think about it. He didn’t have time for that, though, because the lady on the phone said they’d come the following morning to get Ronan tasted.

“Do you know what time tomorrow?” Adam asked. “I can try to come and—”

“Mr. Parrish,” the nurse said. “You’ve been in close contact with a plausible infected specimen.” Adam didn’t like how she said that, as if he was the subject of a scummy experiment. “You’ll need to be quarantined, preferably together with Mr. Lynch.”

Adam forgot how to breathe.

“Ma’am, that’s not—”

“Don’t worry. If you show no symptoms, it’ll only need to be for 72 hours, or until either of you can spend 72 hours without any fever without the help of fever reducers. In any case, in mild cases it is over seven days after the first symptoms appear. We’ll call before we visit you tomorrow. As we speak, I’m emailing you the precautions and recommendations you’ll need to take. Please bear in mind it’s extremely important not to spread the virus in these initial phases. Thank you for calling.”

After she’d hung up, Adam spent four full minutes looking at the black screen on Ronan’s phone. He knew because he was counting in his mind to try to calm himself down. By the time Declan called it was already the fifth minute, and he wasn’t calm.

“Hello,” he answered.

“Parrish?”

“He’s fine,” Adam said, because that was what Declan wanted to know. He cursed in his mind at the thought that they’d have to tell Gansey, too.

“They’re testing him tomorrow,” Declan said, like there was nothing that could be done against it. Adam didn’t know if he wanted to get tested.

“Yes,” he answered, to have something to say.

“Are you getting tested, too?”

Adam couldn’t afford to be tested, and he surely couldn’t afford to get sick.

“No.”

“I’d come if it wasn’t for Matthew.”

“I’ll be here,” Adam said, and for the first time in the evening it was him who hung up on the other person.

He breathed through the mask and rang the factory next, in part because if Declan returned his call he’d find the line occupied. It took the night shift manager less than two full sentences from Adam to inform him that he was sacked.

He dialed again a new number.

“Orla, it’s Adam,” he said, after a too suggestive welcoming line from Blue’s cousin. “Is Calla home?”

Orla snickered.

“Of course, honey. Shouldn’t be out and about, haven’t you heard?”

Calla told him, when she finally got on the phone, that she’d pass the message on to the Aglionby administration that he couldn’t come for at least a week. She also said something cryptic that he didn’t have the mindset to process but he didn’treally have time to care because he still needed to call his other two workplaces.

Ronan surprised him when he leaned on the doorframe while Adam finished cooking the sausages.

“I need to pee, Parrish.”

Adam had never seen this kitchen-bathroom combo they had going at Monmouth as very practical, but it definitely wasn’t very much so when you were quarantined with a highly-contagious virus.

“Wash your hands after, Lynch.”

“Don’t you work early tomorrow?” Ronan asked, when Adam pointedly left the kitchen just for as long as it took Ronan to enter the room.

“Not anymore,” he growled, turning the stove off.

He wasn’t really in the mood to ruin his dinner by watching Ronan pee, so he put his sausages on a plate and left for the table in the main room.

“What makes you think I’d want to see your face just after waking up?” Ronan asked. He’d at least done as Adam had told him, as Adam had been listening for the tap and the soap squelches.

Adam glared at Ronan before taking a bite of his food.

“Guess what,” he gritted when he’d swallowed, hating that he couldn’t get closer to Ronan to glower properly. “I’m quarantined. Full lockdown, that means. So we’re both stuck here and they’re coming tomorrow to get you tested for coronavirus, and you’re going to be a positive and they don’t care if I’m one or not because they’ve already laid me off. So don’t fucking touch anything now that you’ve washed your hands and bring your food to your room and then go the fuck back to sleep while I disinfect the whole place.” Adam’s throat felt raspy. He realized he’d forgotten the apple juice in the kitchen. “Fuck.”

“Adam—”

“Also, take a painkiller before going to bed. And turn on the sound on your phone,” he added, because he should have mentally composed a list of the things he’d wanted to say to Ronan before he woke up instead of just winging it up.

He heard Ronan shuffle back to his bedroom and close the door after him. Adam didn’t look up. He just made a big dinner and made a big effort of reviewing in his head the Latin declensions he’d be tested in two weeks time, so that he didn’t focus in how the tears prickling in his eyes made everything taste wrong.

He followed the Hospital email’s instructions and bleached the whole bathroom and every surface on sight. He threw all the towels in the washing machine and scrubbed the light switchers and the door handles until his arms ached.

He then removed the gloves and the mask and let them rest on Noah’s bedroom’s just-cleaned nightstand.

Adam condensed everything he was trying not to feel into a very deep sigh. He removed his jeans and laid down on Noah’s bed.

Noah’s jokes could maybe make the situation a bit more bearable, but he hadn’t appeared even once in the whole evening.

Adam was fucked.

He’d lost all his jobs. Two of them, _permanently_. And with Boyd he’ll have to see. He didn’t of course have any savings—all his money was what was left of that night’s meager shopping. No money meant no flat. No flat meant many things Adam didn’t really want to go into just right then.

He turned to the side and pressed his eyes together. If he willed sleep, maybe it’d come.

There was really no point, though. He didn’t have to wake up early anymore.

And, on top of that, Ronan was sick. Infected, most likely.

A mild case, the nurse on the phone had said. But Adam had heard the news—all over the radio at Boyd’s. Patients got serious really fast. People went to ICU because of this. There was a real shortage of ventilators because people needed help to breathe because of this. People _died_ because of this.

Adam muffled a sob on Noah’s pillow, the way he hadn’t forgotten how to do, because the last thing he needed was for Ronan to hear him crying from the next room.

At last, he drifted off to sleep. Only to wake up to Ronan’s cough.

Adam jumped out of bed.

It was early morning, judging by the light coming from the window he hadn’t bothered to close the previous night.

He almost stepped over something on the floor by Noah’s door into the main room. A note and a phone.

Adam eyed Gansey’s empty bed suspiciously before reading the note. It was Ronan’s handwriting.

_Read that email and dreamt this. Cleaned my room and left the window open. No need for you to come inside._

Adam was still half asleep but he remembered to put his gloves on before taking the phone. He sanitized it with the alcohol from the first-aid kit before taking it back to Noah’s room and adding Ronan’s number to the empty contact list.

 _How’s your fever?_ , he texted. He snorted after sending it. Ronan was _not_ going to answer, he knew. He hated his phone and last night he probably was running a fever when he dreamt this and decided to have a laugh at Adam.

But he heard the phone’s _ding_ before he had time to tidy the bed. He was a bit ashamed of how fast he unlocked it.

_98.6_

_Doctor coming @10._

Adam sighed. _Okay_ , he typed. This was easy. He could do this. He didn’t even have to lie to the phone. Everything could turn out all right in the end.

 _Taking a shower now_ , Ronan said, which was a bit too much information for Adam until he caught up and realized it was so that they wouldn’t need to coincide in the same room.

Through Noah’s open door, he saw Ronan’s shadow headed for the bathroom. He also heard Chainsaw flutter and felt immensely relieved the bird was still alive. He didn’t know how she’d coped, all alone with a sick Ronan for who knows how many days.

He drank some of his juice for breakfast and started again with the deep-in cleaning of the bathroom, which thankfully didn’t leave him much time to panic before the doctors came.

It was actually easier and faster than how he’d imagined it would be. Adam opened them the door. From behind their astronaut-like outfits, they glared contemptuously at Gansey’s Henrietta model. They took Ronan’s samples first. They asked Adam if he wanted to take the test, again, and then they asked them both questions about their medical records that Adam didn’t really want to answer.

They told them they’d get the results via email later that day or the following morning.

Adam hadn’t still seen Ronan when they left.

He promptly cleaned the whole house one more time, because the white things they were wearing were supposed to protect _them_ from the virus but what if the virus got stuck on the fabric and then fell on Monmouth’s floor, only to be seduced by how deliciously threadbare Adam’s socks were?

Only years of practicing the fine art of not thinking about anything else apart from the work he was doing when trying to get stuff done allowed him to focus on his Trigonometry homework when he finally got to open his book. It wouldn’t do for him now to dwell on the fact that he wouldn’t be able to attend the following week’s test or that he _did_ have a spare pen for when the one he was using definitely died, but it was at St. Agnes and therefore completely inaccessible for him.

On the bright side, Noah had a desk and he still hadn’t come to say hello so Adam settled there to work and purposefully didn’t think about how he couldn’t go to the Aglionby library either to make use of the computers there so how on earth was he supposed to write his Literature essay. On the not-so-bright side, his stomach growled from time to time, but he also had a lot of practice in ignoring that.

Adam startled badly when the phone rang. At first, he didn’t even register the call was _for him,_ from Ronan, one-room-over.

He rushed to answer.

“What’s wrong?” he greeted.

Ronan snorted.

“Nothing. Chill.”

Adam used the relief to pop a cramp on his wrinkled back muscles.

“Uh—Okay. What is it, then?”

“Gonna order groceries online. What do you want.” Ronan’s voice sounded all right on the phone, and Adam hadn’t heard any coughs all morning. He was focusing on that when Ronan’s words gained sense on Adam’s mind. He then remembered the few rumpled bills on his jeans’ pocket.

He was grateful there was a wall in between them so that Ronan couldn’t see him flush. Careful not to make any sounds and feeling utterly ridiculous, he tiptoed to the open door and gently closed it all the way.

“Uh—” he finally answered.

“I was thinking easy stuff, just to get by. Some pasta and I guess vegetables, this kind of shit. We’ve got some rice left, so that, too. Do you like—” Here, Ronan made a pause that Adam deigned was very pointlessly dramatic until he heard the distant coughs. “—salmon?”

Adam hung up. He’d never tried salmon. It sounded nice, he supposed. It’d been hours since he’d last cleaned the room. He should evict Ronan from _his_ room to make sure it was properly sanitized.

He should have spent the morning googling stats and facts about Covid-19 and not doing homework he wasn’t going to be able to hand in.

He called Ronan. Astonishingly, Ronan picked up.

They were living the Apocalypse.

“Can you dream something that disinfects stuff as we touch them?” Adam asked. “Also, I’ve only got 69 dollars and 40 cents and I just paid my rent for the month so that’s okay but I’ll have to pay the electricity bills and all this other stuff and I can’t go to work next week and it doesn’t matter anyway because I lost all my jobs yesterday,” he said, very disrespectfully not allowing Ronan to say anything. But Ronan didn’t say anything even after Adam had finished, which felt a bit more disrespectful because it hadn’t been easy for Adam to say all that stuff.

Adam swallowed.

“Declan can tell you five ways you can sue these fuckers who laid you off because you’re on quarantine,” Ronan eventually offered.

“They’ll never allow me back if I do that.”

“Chainsaw can harass them until they do.”

“How is she?”

“Out.” Lucky her. “Flying.”

“How’s your fever?”

“I’m ordering fucking salmon.”

Adam’s gloved hand gripped the seat of Noah’s chair. He reminded himself he probably should be patient with Ronan because Ronan was sick.

“Lynch,” he began, punching his words through his gritted teeth. “I can’t even cook salmon. And you’re not supposed to be making food.”

“So look for a fucking Youtube tutorial,” and Ronan hung up.

Adam stalked out of the room and aggressively washed his gloves before pouring himself a glass of apple juice he drank with as much fury as he could muster.

He wished he could leave. He should be at school.

He wanted to go to Cabeswater and lose some time there.

He texted Gansey.

_It’s Adam. Long story. Ronan was tested for coronavirus, we’re both quarantined._

He deleted the message because it looked like a war report, and then he wrote it again word for word because he didn’t really want to get into long explanations that would only drain the little energy the apple juice would have granted him.

 _Can I use your laptop for essay writing?_ , he added, because he was still angry with Ronan and when he felt angry he didn’t feel so pathetic when asking for a favor.

Gansey called, but Adam didn’t want to answer. He didn’t really want to talk about it, and didn’t want to ask inane questions about the yoga and the retirement and Helen’s boyfriend and Blue. So he just ignored the call and after three more Gansey took the message and texted back.

 _Sure_ , he said, presumably to the laptop question.

 _When do you get the results? Do you think he’ll be positive? How did he get infected? Is Ronan okay? Do you need anything else? Do you need me to come home? Did you get tested too?_ , were the follow-up questions, which Adam stopped reading in favor of switching on the laptop to go back to being productive.

He called Gansey back an hour later, after the delivery guy had brought them their groceries and left them on the doorstep. He then called Declan because Gansey insisted and because he knew Ronan was not going to, and wasted forty minutes looking for salmon recipes on Gansey’s laptop before trying the simplest-looking one for a late lunch he ate by himself on Noah’s room.

He knocked later on Ronan’s door.

Chainsaw cawed.

“Ronan?”

“What.”

Adam bit his lip. He supposed he could have called for this, but for some reason it had seemed easier to ask a closed door.

“Can I borrow some clothes?”

There was a pause. “Get out of the door. I’ll leave so you can come in,” Ronan said, after a while.

Adam waited sitting on Gansey’s bed. Only then did he think he could have asked Gansey to borrow _his_ clothes, which were surely less likely to be contaminated. Adam knew Gansey didn’t exclusively own polo shirts so there must have been something he could have used.

Too late, though, because then Ronan emerged from his room, face mask on place.

Adam studied his face, in case it showed some sign of impeding doom the doctors had managed to overlook in the morning.

“Haven’t touched anything on the bottom drawer for longer than a week, so that should be clean. Help yourself,” he said. He could be grinning, but Adam couldn’t know for sure.

“Thanks,” he nodded, getting on his feet.

He held his breath before entering Ronan’s room, partly because of the coronavirus and partly because it wasn’t often that you got invited there.

“What the fuck is this?” he exhaled, turning around to face Ronan the moment he saw the pile of dirty dishes on the floor.

“C’mon, Parrish. I was saving you the work.” Ronan, wearing a tank top, was leaning on the bathroom door frame. Adam wasn’t sure if the virus could spread by the sweat, but he was going to scrub that damn door from head to toe the moment Ronan left.

“What does that even mean. You said you were cleaning your room, Ronan.”

“I have. My bed’s all made.”

“You might be infected, you asshole. You can’t leave dirty dishes laying around. In fact, you shouldn’t do that even if you’re completely healthy. It’s disgusting!”

They were too far away for Adam to be sure, but he’d have sworn Ronan was narrowing his eyes at him.

“So don’t come inside my room, Parrish.”

“Well, I am because I’m cleaning this mess, so get yourself busy and don’t touch anything without telling me.” He took the dirty dishes and waited until Ronan got out of the way to put them on the sink.

Surprisingly, Ronan didn’t protest while Adam bleached the window handles and changed the bed sheets and comforted Chainsaw for having to live in such a dirty environment.

“You can go back in when the floors get dry,” Adam said when he finished mopping. He wanted to get the dishes done before he tried a bit of studying, but he shockingly found they’d already been washed.

“I’ve set them aside, so you don’t have to use the same as mine,” Ronan’s voice said from behind Adam, making him flinch. He was sitting next to Gansey’s Henrietta—he looked startlingly small, folded upon himself by the tiny buildings.

“Fine,” Adam said.

“If you’re so worried about getting sick, you should’ve taken the fucking test.”

“The test only tells you if you are already sick. It does nothing to prevent you from getting it— _cleaning_ , on the other hand—”

“Then wash your hands _before_ picking your nose,” Ronan snapped. “And even if you get it you’ll be fine. You can’t sell me now you’re afraid of a bit of fever, Parrish.”

“It’s not the virus!” Adam shouted. He shouldn’t shout, he knew. You were not supposed to shout at coronavirus patients, or plausible patients—he was sure that was written in the recommendations somewhere. He didn’t stop shouting. “Or it is, because they say it’s nothing, like the flu, but then the next day there are doctors dying and Chinese people freaking out, so perhaps it’s a bit more dangerous than that. But, guess what, if I get sick, I need to be here, stuck, doing _nothing,_ until they tell me I can get out, by which point the world may very well have ended at the pace we’re going! So why don’t you _for once_ in your life take something seriously and keep your damn room clean, Ronan? It’s not like you’re five.”

Ronan coughed.

Adam was being a bit unfair, he knew. But he was tired, as he always was, and in his cleaning frenzy he’d forgotten to get the clothes.

“You shouldn’t have fucking come, then,” Ronan said, and it kind of sounded like a whine. When Adam had met Ronan, he never would’ve thought him as the whining type.

“Nothing to be done, now.” He sighed. “Can I still get those clothes?”

Ronan nodded.

The results—positive—came in the evening. Noah also came in the evening, apparently with only just enough time to hang out with Ronan while Adam was in the shower, as Ronan later informed him. Adam didn’t think it was due to shyness that Noah hadn’t come to see Adam too before leaving. He tried not to linger too much on it.

He dreamt of salmons during the plague.

In the morning, he woke up to two texts from Ronan. The first one included an extensive explanation on why the air freshener he’d dreamt that was supposed to also sanitize the air didn’t work very well. The second one was an Excel spreadsheet.

Adam hadn’t known you could open Excel spreadsheets on a phone.

He didn’t really know how Excel spreadsheets worked, either, so he took a bit to interpret the data in this one—he went to the bathroom and he made some coffee for breakfast, and he ate some toast and cleaned the whole kitchen before calling Ronan.

“This is not minimum wage,” he said, when he got Ronan’s greeting grunt.

“Good fucking morning to you too, asshole.”

Adam bit his lip. He _was_ being an asshole. He supposed he could have apologized, but then Ronan _had_ sent him a spreadsheet with the groceries bought the previous day on the left column and a random estimate of hours on the right one, and plenty of dollars all over the spreadsheet that Adam could perfectly imagine Ronan happily typing on his laptop, gloomily at night. It was even color-coded.

“I’m talking about your budget project. Why you never put that much energy on the things you actually have to do for school, I’ll never know. But it’s all wrong! For starters, a bottle of milk costs _at least_ double this.”

“But we’re two people drinking, Parrish. Do the math.”

Adam narrowed his eyes at Ronan’s closed door, as if the wood were about to snap back at him. When he caught himself, he blamed the quarantine, which must have been getting to his head already.

He moved to the right column.

“And what the hell is this? I don’t spend three hours _a day_ cooking. I have other stuff to do, you know?” Ronan had added hours on end with ridiculous line item names, like _food crafting_ , which Adam’d concluded meant cooking. The sum of all of them equaled that of the groceries bought.

“There’s a leeway for researching time.”

Adam snorted.

“Okay, so what about this _overall nursing_ nonsense?”

If Adam wasn’t quite sure one of his ears didn’t work, he’d have sworn he could hear Ronan swallow.

“That is for calling the hospital.”

“Ronan—”

“There is also a bonus for having to deal with my brother’s shit.”

“Lynch, you are _bribing_ me and—”

“Yeah, sorry. I’m busy right now,” Ronan rushed, and hung up before Adam had the chance to process that.

“You don’t lie, my ass,” he hissed, to the blank phone screen. Busy, doing _what,_ exactly? Ronan couldn’t even get out of his room!

He got his answer half a second later, when the Murder Squash song filtered from under Ronan’s door.

Adam called him again. Ronan didn’t pick up.

Adam stomped to his room and banged on his door.

“I’m gonna study, so turn that down!” he yelled.

Ronan didn’t. In revenge, Adam texted Gansey that Ronan had said he missed him. The atrocious noise got abruptly cut off.

“That,” Ronan said when he rang Adam after, “was a low blow.”

“You _did_ miss him.”

“He wouldn’t shut up about inverted fuck-asana!”

“What?”

“How would I know?”

Adam smirked.

“Hey. What’s _patefacit_ mean?”

“Disclosed.”

“Right.” The sentence Adam had been trying to translate for a full minute suddenly gained sense. “Thanks!”

“What’re you doing?”

“Homework. You?” Adam asked back, because he _could_ be polite if only he tried really hard.

“Talking to a nerd.”

Adam hummed. He scribbled an arrow next to a sentence he wasn’t completely sure of.

“Have you taken your meds today?” he asked.

“Sure. Adam.”

“Yes?”

“I’m gonna die in solitude.”

“What now?”

“My fever’s 100.2. And I haven’t been outside for ages. Only Chainsaw takes pity on me.”

“Yes. What happens when _parco_ goes with something other than dative?”

“You fail, that’s what happens.”

Adam rolled his eyes, blowing some eraser scraps from Noah’s desk.

“You were just complaining at how much time Gansey had spent talking to you about his yoga thing. You’re not going to die in solitude, and you’re most definitely _not_ going to die from this.”

“It’s like forbearance. Like they’re saying you should avoid whatever.”

“Uh?” Adam eloquently asked.

“ _Parco_. With infinitive. That’s what it means.”

“Ah. Yes, that might make sense.” Adam studied his translation.

“Parrish.”

“Hello.”

“Will you come visit?”

Adam paused. For all he’d thought about Ronan and his coronavirus in the past days, he hadn’t even once considered how _Ronan_ must have been feeling.

“I can’t do that right now, Ronan,” he said, much softer than the rest of their conversation.

“I know.”

“I’ll start cooking something for lunch, okay?” Adam said, standing from Noah’s chair.

“What are you making today?” Ronan seemed to perk up.

“Dunno. How many hours were slotted for cooking today again?”

“Three.”

“I’ll have to make something fancy, then. Something like a mushroom emulsion with berry juice watering, if that’s up to your tastes.”

He heard Ronan laugh, both through the line and in the other room. Adam smiled to himself as he took out a pot to cook pasta.

“Make that _à la meunière_ ”.

“And what the hell is that.”

“Something Gansey’s mom mentioned once. I bet Declan likes it.”

They only hung up when Ronan’s cough got worse and Adam told him to rest his voice.

After eating lunch, each in one room, and after Adam reminded Ronan to wash his dishes, Ronan said he was going to shower.

Adam decided to take advantage of the quiet time to make a head start on another essay. He got opened a new document on Gansey’s laptop and rescued from his bag a very deficient outline he’d managed to scrape before his last shift at the factory, and suddenly remembered he was unemployed and living basically on Ronan’s charity.

He paused.

The shower kept running. If Adam started crying just then, there was still a chance he’d be already finished by the time Ronan came out, none the wiser.

He breathed deeply.

If he could just focus on what he was about to do, he promised himself, he could take a few minutes that night to relieve his pent-up emotions in the privacy of Noah’s bed.

A weird noise came from the bathroom.

Adam was at the door even before Ronan’s loud curse.

“Ronan?”

Only coughing answered. Adam knocked repeatedly, all his previous worries buried again.

“Ronan! If you don’t answer, I’m coming in!”

Something between a moan and a growl was his cue to open the door.

He found Ronan sprawled on the floor, looking miserable while holding the bath curtain with one hand while with the other he clutched his chest, torn apart by his coughing. The shower was still running.

“Shit, Ronan. Are you okay?” he uselessly asked, rushing inside to turn the water off.

“Fuck off,” Ronan managed between coughs. “You’ll get it,” he rasped. Adam remembered he wasn’t wearing his face mask nor his gloves, but Ronan was still on the floor, _shivering_.

“Shut the fuck up,” he said, taking a towel from the rack and kneeling next to Ronan. “Did you hurt your head?” At Ronan’s negative, he helped him quite awkwardly to stand up.

His skin was burning up.

“I’m fine, Parrish. Just lost my footing. You can leave now,” he said, but had to support himself on the counter to be able to stand.

Adam rearranged his towel so that not so much skin was out in the air when they left the bathroom and slowly helped him carry himself to his bedroom. He only regained his normal breath when he deposited him on the rumpled sheets.

“When did you get your last pill?” he asked, already looking for the thermometer among all the mess on the nightstand.

“This morning,” Ronan said. “I need a mask.”

Adam went to retrieve a face mask. After handing it to Ronan together with his analgesics, he washed his hands in two full cycles.

“My mom used to make us soup when we got sick,” Ronan said, with somewhat vacant eyes when Adam came back into his room.

Adam hummed and thought about Aurora Lynch, safe from contagion because she was only surrounded by roses in Cabeswater. It must have been nice, growing up with someone to take care of you when you felt under the weather.

Ronan took wordlessly the clean underwear Adam handed him, putting it on without much thought. Adam fled the room because _he_ was thinking too much.

“Call if you need me,” he cried before hiding in the bathroom-kitchen, where he busied himself putting some water to simmer and fixing the mess Ronan had left in his wake.

It wasn’t serious, he told himself. He probably just got dizzy and couldn’t find anything to support him, and the fever made everything seem bigger so that’s why he didn’t immediately stand back up. Adam had spotted a red mark on Ronan’s back while toweled him, so that’s probably where he’d fallen.

Ronan’s coughs sounded less violent with every passing minute. It _would_ be all right.

“You’re not my mom,” Ronan mumbled when Adam took him a bowl of bland soup.

“I’m the best you got,” Adam said. He was aware his soup was probably shitty compared to that of Ronan’s mom, and his caring was probably too distant and selfish compared to that of a mother.

He was not enough because what Ronan needed was his family and Adam had never known much about those.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Ronan said, blowing on the steaming bowl.

Adam agreed. He silently apologized.

“I’m leaving now.”

Cabeswater was there when he called for him, sitting on Noah’s bed, hands washed again. The forest didn’t know how to calm the knot in his stomach, but feeling there was _something_ out there, waiting for him, steeled Adam.

It was late when he allowed himself a break from his textbooks to go to sleep. He hadn’t managed to get much done so he didn’t really think he deserved the rest. He then realized what he was thinking and told himself to stop being stupid, because it was two in the morning and he didn’t have anywhere to go when he woke up.

 _Everything okay?_ , he texted Ronan, but fell asleep before getting a reply.

 _Yup_ , he read, when he awoke abruptly from a nightmare. It was still dark.

He felt a bit woozy when he got up too fast, but he managed to get to the bathroom.

He washed his hands, all chapped and parched from the incessant scrubbing, and threw some cold water to his face. His cheeks felt on fire. He washed his hands again.

There was some coffee in the fridge, but he couldn’t decide if he wanted to go back to sleep. He could probably drown the whole pot and still fall asleep in less than two minutes, though, so he decided it didn’t matter and took a mug with him.

He squinted at the light coming from under Ronan’s door. He rolled his eyes and cleared his throat, already on his way to Noah’s room.

He caught himself.

Adam knocked on Ronan’s door.

“Parrish?” Ronan asked.

Adam rested his forehead on wood. It felt cool.

He was so fucked.

“I think I’m infected, too. Can I come in?” he asked, in a very small voice, which was something stupid to do because there was still a door between them so maybe Ronan couldn’t hear him.

“Shit.” So maybe Ronan _had_ heard. “Fuck.” Yeah, that, too.

Ronan opened the door, making Adam lose his balance for half a moment because he righted himself. He’d spilled some coffee on Ronan’s sweat pants.

“Sorry,” Adam said, not really talking about the pants. He risked a look at Ronan. None of them were wearing their face masks, which was the opposite of what they were supposed to do.

“Shut the fuck up, Parrish.” Ronan turned around and left Adam standing by the door, which was very confusing for Adam until Ronan produced the thermometer and handed it to him. “No! Wait,” he said, when Adam’s hand was already extended to get it.

“Hey!” It felt like a betrayal.

“Shut up,” Ronan said again, but Adam hadn’t really spoken. “I’ll just disinfect it.”

The thermometer smelled like alcohol when Adam finally got to hold it. Adam wrinkled his nose. That smell brought him memories of an alcohol bottle well hidden behind his mom’s shaving gel, at the bottom of a cupboard back in the trailer.

“You should pour alcohol on every cut you get,” he recited, for some reason.

“How much?” Ronan asked, without giving the thermometer time to do its job.

“101. And is that a three?” Adam read the numbers on the little device’s screen.

“Fuck.”

Fuck indeed. Adam had a simple job to do, with simple enough instructions to follow. He should have washed his hands more.

“What now?” he asked Ronan, because Ronan seemed like he knew what they should do. But Ronan chose that moment to bite his lip and shake his head, which made Adam doubt his early confidence.

“Just—Just take some medicine and go the fuck back to sleep. And if you still have a fever in the morning, we’ll call the hospital again.”

“I don’t want to get tested,” Adam said.

“Why not?”

“If I’m positive, I’ll be a number in the stats.”

Ronan snorted and carried him from the sleeve of his shirt, which of course was also Ronan’s. At some point, Adam had lost his mug of coffee.

“I’m already a number in the stats, so I’ll keep you company.”

“That’s nice,” Adam said, because it was. “I don’t wanna sleep, though.” He stopped walking.

“What would you wanna do?”

“Just,” Adam slurred. He tried to organize his fuzzy thoughts. “I’d like to hang out? ‘Cause, y’know, if I got it, too, it doesn’t matter, so we don’t have to hide anymore?” He felt himself flush, but perhaps that was because of the fever.

“We don’t know if you’re infected yet.”

Adam shrugged. “That’s fine, too.” Adam could go back to Noah’s room and entertain himself. “But I’m never making you soup ever again.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You just need to go to bed.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do!” Adam didn’t want to stay standing anymore. His legs hurt and his head was getting too light. He leaned on the wall while he glared at Ronan. He _dared_ him to say something about it.

“Your soup was shit, anyway,” Ronan smirked after a long pause.

“No, it wasn’t. I had it, too. It was a perfectly fine soup.”

“Wanna watch a baking show with me?” Ronan asked, and Adam had to rewind the conversation in his head because he didn’t think there had been a lead-up to that.

“You’re right. We don’t need the phones anymore. So—I was watching this shitty show. They bake. It’s like a competition. Come on in.”

Ronan disappeared inside his room. Adam hesitated before following.

He sat on the bed while Ronan fixed some pillows, because he was tired.

“C’mon, Parrish,” Ronan said. Adam got inside the covers with him, the bed wide enough for them to be able to coexist in there without having to climb over each other. Adam felt suddenly glad they were quarantined at Monmouth and _not_ in St. Agnes. “We’ll call the hospital in the morning.”

Adam nodded. He wasn’t really into baking shows, or into shows of any kind, really. He didn’t have a TV set at St. Agnes, nor time to watch TV. Back at the trailer, his dad used to always have the TV on. He couldn’t remember if his mom had cared.

“How many _things_ do these people need to just bake a damn cake, anyway?” Adam said, after a while of watching callow people fumbling around with extravagant kitchen appliances.

Ronan’s side look meant he found Adam funny. Adam coughed, and used it to hide his bother.

“We’ve got an oven at the Barns,” he simply said.

“Besides, this is all extremely time consuming and really not so very efficient. And for what, right? A sponge cake doesn’t provide you with any essential nutrients you couldn’t get somewhere else.”

“Unlike _coke_.”

Adam elbowed Ronan, just because he could. He smirked a little at the prospect of being able to talk face to face with someone.

“Besides, _sugar_.”

Ronan had the nerve to _snicker._

“So next time I’m at the Barns I’ll bake a goddamn great cake, and later I’ll eat the whole fucking cake all by myself, and I won’t regret not even giving you a tiny slice of frosting.”

“You surely _can’t_ bake,” Adam muttered, but judging by how sweaty the people in the show it looked just the amount of pointlessly difficult Ronan would enjoy.

Ronan laughed.

Adam only managed to disentangle himself from Ronan’s laugh when he started coughing.

Ronan passed him the coughing syrup.

When Adam grimaced at its foul taste, Ronan was looking.

“What?” he asked, capping the bottle.

“I’m glad you stayed,” Ronan whispered, like a secret. Adam didn’t say he hadn’t been allowed to leave, because he was busy turning his brain off so that it wouldn’t scream at him all the things that could go wrong if he kept looking at Ronan’s mouth.

“Me too,” he said, or meant to say, because it got kind of lost when he leaned and kissed Ronan.

He looked as flushed as Adam felt.

“Pretty sure we’re not supposed to be doing this,” Adam muttered, with Ronan’s breath on his. His arms felt wobbly from supporting his weight.

“Want to wait ‘til we can get out of here?” Ronan asked. One of his hands came to rest on Adam’s back.

“Hell no,” Adam said. He kissed Ronan again.

**Author's Note:**

> Please bear in mind that I did not research thoroughly the protocols and recommendations to follow when you get a positive to write this fic. I did skim a bit through the WHO site and mostly wrote about what I've heard these days and my own experience on how things are being done here at my country, which is not the US. So please do not under any circumstances follow this fic's recommendations if you think you might be infected.
> 
> That said, it's been 12 days since I personally left my house, so this is just a way of processing what's happening. Lockdown is hard, but I firmly believe it will be worth it in the end.
> 
> Title comes from the last verse of a haiku by Chiyo-ni: plum trees blossom / whatever falls / spring will be spring
> 
> Please stay safe, and if you liked it leave a comment! ♥


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